In reply to racerdave600 : I had great hope for Danica I thought she would be the first of many female drivers to join. Alas it wasn’t to be. In spite of being put into really competitive cars and teams she was never able to get the big win required.

Frankly I don’t understand the attraction any more. The cars are massively more expensive to race and no longer seem like something a dedicated racer can field out of his garage.

There is nothing stock on a NASCAR anymore. Now even the Factories are going to leave the cars behind.

Should we go back to the roots and race actual Stock vehicles? SUV’s perhaps?

My 11 year old brother in law wants to learn to work on cars and likes watching in-car autocross videos. He doesn't have the patience to do real mechanical work yet but he sure enjoyed learning how to use the big impact wrench. We're tearing apart an old Escort little bits at a time.

There are teams of 20-30something age folks like me that I see competing in Champcar.

I was talking to a recently graduated former student who is making money flipping old Subarus while he saves up to buy his dream car, a WRX STi hatchback. He was telling me about the huge informal car meets where he hangs out with his buddies. I'm not hip on the social media scene but that seems to be the center of the youth car culture. I was encouraged that he said he wants to start doing autocross and track days because he's realizing he can't fully enjoy his cars on the street.

My 6 year old watches Aussie Touring Cars on Youtube with me, loves going "super fast" on her bike, and wants to be a race car driver when she grows up. She also wants to be a princess astronaut (that's not two separate things) and Tinker Belle at Disney World so I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one

I see Chumpcar/ LeMons as being an affordable version of what Vintage car racing started out to be. That too has progressed to the point where a competitive car is at least $5000 and with entry fees and expenses a single weekend can exceed $10,000 per event. Now divided by 5 guys that’s only $2000 but getting even half of that on a Regular basis isn’t for the faint of heart. ( or pocketbook )

Local club events require a car built to a set of regulations plus about $1000 in entry fees, travel expenses, consumables, and misc. competitive cars seem to start at multiples of an average annual salary and can be totally destroyed almost instantly.

In reply to racerdave600 : I had great hope for Danica I thought she would be the first of many female drivers to join. Alas it wasn’t to be. In spite of being put into really competitive cars and teams she was never able to get the big win required.

Frankly I don’t understand the attraction any more. The cars are massively more expensive to race and no longer seem like something a dedicated racer can field out of his garage.

There is nothing stock on a NASCAR anymore. Now even the Factories are going to leave the cars behind.

Should we go back to the roots and race actual Stock vehicles? SUV’s perhaps?

It's difficult to jump from another form of racing into Nascar. We came straight out of IMSA and adapting was an eye opener. Not only are there so many different ways to adjust your car, you adjust each corner independently of the other, but driving is another matter entirely as well, and nothing except years of experience will help. There is a long list of drivers that tired it and failed for various reasons, such Franchitti, Scott Pruitt and others. Something as simple as rolling into the corner and not burning up your brakes if far more difficult than it sounds. I think you will eventually see a female do well, but in some ways, its about the numbers. If you don't have many in the lower ranks its difficult to get them to the upper level. We've raced against several throughout the years, and most have been midpackers. Not that a woman couldn't get to the top, but we never saw one. To be fair, there were plenty of men midpackers as well. Its just that there are more of them and they do not stand out as much.

I think Danica probably should have stayed in Indycar, but its easy for me to say that. As to the stock car question. I don't know that you can do that realistically with today's cars. They certainly couldn't run the same speeds reliably like the current ones, Its actually pretty cheap to race and rebuild these compared to what you may think. For a big time series it is not that bad if you take into account how much they are on the track for the season. For less than $100k you can put a car on the track, but of course it is everything else that costs the money. If you want to win, you have to do the other things. If you just want to show up, its not so bad. Much cheaper in fact than fielding a car at the 24. What you would have to do is to cap the budget to limit the 400 employees, the mega trucks, etc. The cars themselves are the cheaper pieces.